Tag Archives | CrunchPad

CrunchPad, JooJoo, Whatever

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 7, 2009 at 1:52 pm

I like writing about gizmos a lot more than soap operas, so when the dream that was the CrunchPad crumbled into a spat between former partners, I sort of lost interest. For the record, Fusion Garage, which decided to pursue the Web-tablet project without TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, announced its plans today. The CrunchPad is now the JooJoo. It’s $499 rather than $300. And the company will be taking preorders at TheJooJoo.com starting on Friday. That’s assuming that Arrington’s “imminent” legal action doesn’t put a crimp in the release schedule.

If you had high hopes for the CrunchPad, what we’re witnessing is the equivalent of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak squabbling on the eve of the Apple II’s release, and Woz firing Jobs. Or something like that. Anyhow, it’s kind of embarrassing. Bad JooJoo, you might say.

Fusion Garage unveiled the JooJoo this morning in a Webcast which I missed–but which was apparently made up of equal parts product demo and sniping at Arrington. The device has a 12.1″ touchscreen and Wi-Fi (but no 3G). I wish the company well. But what do you think the chances are that the JooJoo will be remembered as anything other than “that gadget was going to be the CrunchPad, and which never amounted to anything?”

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CrunchPad, We Hardly Knew Ye

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 30, 2009 at 9:12 am

Weird! Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch and father of the CrunchPad tablet computer, has blogged that the CrunchPad project is dead. He says that the manufacturing partner in charge of building the CrunchPad attempted to seize control of the device and cut TechCrunch out of its plans. Joint ownership of the project means that it can’t do so, but Arrington says it’s all over.

Mostly though I’m just sad. I never envisioned the CrunchPad as a huge business. I just wanted a tablet computer that I could use to consume the Internet while sitting on a couch. I’ve always pushed to open source all or parts of the project. So this isn’t really about money. It was about the thrill of building something with a team that had the same vision. Now that’s going to be impossible.

The news of the CrunchPad’s death comes a few weeks after rumors of…the CrunchPad’s death. But according to Arrington’s post, the project began to fall apart after the rumors of early November appeared, for a different set of reasons. (The stories had the CrunchPad being too costly to manufacture to be sold at a reasonable price.)

Arrington has always said that the CrunchPad sprung from his own desire to have a “dead simple” tablet he could use to get online from his couch. I get his desire. Well, mostly: I’ve never been entirely clear why the CrunchPad would be a better couch computer than a more typical, versatile cheap portable computer. (I’ve owned a bunch of my own personal CrunchPads over the years–they’ve just been clamshell shaped, had keyboards, run Windows, and come from companies such as Apple, Asus, and Sony.)

If the CrunchPad was really as close to being ready for prime time as Arrington says–he writes that its makers were about to start taking orders–you gotta think there’s a decent chance that it’s not really dead–only resting. Would you buy a CrunchPad, or something vaguely like a CrunchPad, if it were to come to market?

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